Summary: God knows our future, our personalities and our capacity to listen, He isn’t ever to say more to use than we can deal with a moment, so be in the know so as to stay in the flow.

1Kings18: 41: “And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink, for there is sound of abundance of rain.”

Notice that there was no cloud and no noise, but by faith Elijah said there was abundance of rain. Verse 42:

“So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Camel, and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees.” I don’t think many of us today can do that for five minutes. It would be like corporal punishment. Verse 43: “And said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up and looked and said, there is nothing. And he said, go again seven times.” This means that there are some prayers that cannot work once. We have to say them seven times. Verses 44-45: “And it came to pass at the seventh time that he said, Behold there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea like a man’s hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, prepare thy chariots and get thee down that the rain stop thee not, and it came to pass in the meanwhile the heaven was black with clouds and wind and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode and went to Jezreel.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO PROVOKE YOUR RAINFALL

To provoke means to deliberately annoy. It means to incite something to do something. It means to incite by arousing anger. It means to stimulate into action. So, whenever you say ‘provoke,’ anger is involved.

When we were very little boys we used to go to play and pluck fruits at a nearby railway compound. One day, somebody took me to the compound and we saw a lot of ripe mangoes and we were throwing stones at them, all of a sudden, we heard the barking of a large dog which was rushing towards us with madness. Prior to that time I had never climbed a tree, but when I saw the anger and the violence with which the dog was coming, I found myself on a tree. How I got there I did not know. So, something provoked me and I got on top of that tree. You never knew what you could do sometimes until you try.

I was a teacher for many years in a secondary school. One day, I was the master on duty and as master on duty you would go round and see that all the students were in the classrooms. One would also go round the toilets and everywhere. As I was going round that day, I noticed the head of a student inside the toilet. When I looked down I did not see the person’s legs. I then looked from the top and saw a boy kneeling right on top of the water closet and busy reading a letter. He did not see me for about three minutes. By the time he looked up and saw me, he screamed. I said, “Bring that letter.” He said, “No sir, no sir, no sir. Don’t read this letter.” Any way he gave me the letter with shaking hands. I saw in the first paragraph: “The garden of love, dearest apple of my eye, the sugar in my tea.” I said, “What class are you?” He said, “Form 3,” that is, what we now call JSS III. “Who wrote this letter?” He said, “One girl in form II.” I said, “Go and bring the girl.” He said, “Ah master, beat me and let me go.” I said, “No beating, go and bring the girl.” Later he dragged the little girl to me and I said, “You wrote this letter?” She said, “Yes,” I said, “Okay, go and bring me your class teacher.” She did and the teacher and I looked at the school results to see how well that boy and the girl were doing. I found out that in the last exam, the boy was number three to the last person and the girl was number two to the last. I now said, “Well, if I take you to the Principal you know what will happen.” They said, “Yes, he will send us out of this school.” I said, “I will not do that. Now, you have three weeks to the exams. If your position does not come between number one and number ten, this letter will get to the school authority and both of you will go.” They said, “Thank you, sir,” and went away. Do you know what? What I did to them provoked them into action. They read very hard and they made it.